I have often thought that I was not doing a horror/old-school/vampire/witch sort of blog I'd be doing a Star Trek one. I am that obsessed. Thankfully for me there already is a great blog that does Star Trek and Doctor and more; TARDIS Captain.
Even so, I can't help but be excited for all the great new Star Trek heading my way.
Here are the previews of all the upcoming Star Trek shows on Paramount+.
I am very excited!
Few movies are as "D&D" to me as 1981's Heavy Metal. It mixes sci-fi, fantasy, horror, with a great soundtrack and more than a few members of SCTV.
I picked up the Heavy Metal Blu-Ray a while back and frankly the transfer is fantastic. Hearing the music in Dolby 5.1 surround is amazing. It is hard to properly critique a movie that made up so much of my teenage years imprinting that instead for tonight I wanted to talk about how Heavy Metal is the perfect movie for NIGHT SHIFT.
Before that let's take a moment to take in that poster.
Taarna. Resplendent on the back of her mount, flying, sword aloft. While her armor might be more 80s stripper, she obviously is a warrior. It is some of Chris Achilléos' best work. I have talked about how White Dwarf always had a Heavy Metal feel for me. This is one of the reasons.
Ok. On to NIGHT SHIFT. Heavy Metal is an anthology. Many stories linked together are a semi-related arc. NIGHT SHIFT is like this in its "Night Worlds" connected, but their own thing. If this is also the vibe you get from "Twilight Zone" or "Tales from the Darkside" then you are on to what was going on in our minds as we put this all together. The Night Companion only adds to this.
"Soft Landing"/"Grimaldi"
Our opening sequence and framing episode let us know what is going on here. This is SciFi, and Horror, and Magic. Astronaut Grimaldi lands on Earth with his Corvette to bring a gift to his daughter. A gift that kills him and traps the girl showing her images of horror. We learn that it is the Loc-Nar an object/power/intelligence of timeless evil.
"Harry Canyon"
The crankiest New York cabbie this side of Corbin Dallas picks up a girl who has a strange object. An alien artifact, the Loc-Nar from the opening sequence. While it is taking place 50 years after the movie was released, it is only 10 years from now. No aliens, no flying cars. We are never getting flying cars. We also get the first indication about the sex and violence this movie has. I remember the discussions about it in school, "It's an R-RATED cartoon!"
Of note for me, some great Stevie Nicks here. One other, but I am saving that one.
While the setting is "futuristic" there is nothing here that could not be done with NIGHT SHIFT. The Loc-Nar is described as "alien" but there is a solid magic vibe about it. In fact there is also a lot here for my Black Star game. More on that as well.
"Den"
Is Sword & Planet to the letter. OR at least how we always suspected it would be. Here the Loc-Nar is a small meteorite that transfers Dennis across time and space into a muscle-bound, hairless barbarian Den. He rescues a girl about to be sacrificed to Uhluhtc (yeah read that one backwards) and gets paid with the only reward she has. Den gets pulled into a power struggle between a Queen and Ard. Both want the Loc-Nar. Ard gets Den to steal it back, the Queen seduces Den into keeping it with her. In the end, they both betray Den and try to sacrifice the girl anyway. Den defeats them not with his strength, but his geeky knowledge of electricity to kill them both. The Loc-Nar tells us that some are strong enough to walk away from it. It flies off into the sky and lands on a space station orbiting Earth.
"Captain Sternn"
In the future, there is a trial for Federation Captain Lincoln F. Sternn. He is charged with a laundry list of crimes and his lawyer is hoping he gets his sentence reduced to "burning his body in secret so no one desecrates his corpse." Sternn has an angle though he has paid off a shulb, Hanover Fiste, to testify on his behalf. Fiste found the Loc-Nar, now the size of a marble, and slowly he comes a hulking brute that attempts to destroy the station to get to Sternn. Eventually, Sternn pays off Fiste and jettisons him out of an air lock. His severed hand, still holding that Loc-Nar lands in a B-17 bomber during WWII.
The Loc-Nar here shows more ability to change size and travel in time and space as it needs. It can also mutate those as it sees fit. I have to admit I have ALWAYS wanted Capt. Lincoln Sternn in a Star Trek adventure as a corupt captain.
"B-17"
This was for the longest time one of my favorites. WWII and zombies. The Loc-Nar turns all the dead airmen into zombies to attack their former crew. What is not to love. This one is pure horror.
"So Beautiful & So Dangerous"
This one has the Loc-Nar and it is assumed that there is a related cause with all the "mutations" being reported. While this is a fun one, it is really just an excuse for robot sex, drug jokes, and the animators to draw naked women. Though it can also be seen as a palette cleanser before the ultimate story.
"Taarna"
Honestly, I could do an entire post on this one. Taarna is absolutely a "Chosen One" from NIGHT SHIFT. The scene where she flies to the temple and puts on her armor and retrieves the sword of Taarak might be some of the most-watched animated sequences in the history of animation. I admit it. I still get chills when I hear the voice of Taarak start "To defend. This is the pact..."
In this segment, the Loc-Nar is showing the young girl his final triumph. It has grown huge and crashes into a mountain on some distant planet. Pilgrims go to seek it out, but they are buried in green lava, only to come out transformed into homicidal monstrous barbarians. They attack a city and kill everyone, but not before the council of elder can psychically summon Taarna, the last of the Taarakians.
Taarna never speaks. But she hunts down the barbarians with the intent to kill them all. She manages to get a few, but she is captured and tortured by their leader. Taarna escapes, reclaims her mount and manages to kill the leader. But she is gravely wounded and she, and her bird, are dying. In a final act of sacrifice, she flies up, holding the Sword of Taarak high she plunged into the Loc-Nar, destroying it there and back on Earth with the little girl watching. The girl runs for safety as her home and the Loc-Nar explode.
A new bird mount lands in her yard and as she mounts it to fly away her hair turns white and another Taarakian is born. Go ahead. Tell me Buffy didn't crib notes from this.
If your characters can't be as epic as Taarna are you really even PLAYING?
One of the best songs in a stellar soundtrack is Blue Öyster Cult's "Veteran of the Psychic Wars." The song is about Elric of Melniboné or Hawkwind or any Eternal Champion. A solid case is made here that the song, here, is about Taarna. The Veterans of the Psychic Wars might be Eternal Champions, but the Veterans of the Supernatural Wars are Chosen Ones.
Don't forget NIGHT SHIFT The Night Companion is nearing its last few days. Give us some support. If we hit the stretch goal I will give a new Night World and this will keep me out of trouble for a while.
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Tim Knight of Hero Press and Pun Isaac of Halls of the Nephilim along with myself are getting together at the Facebook Group I'd Rather Be Killing Monsters to discuss these movies. Follow along with the hashtag #IdRatherBeWatchingMonsters.
Going with another alternate word today.
Day 7 Inspiration
Every so often I get asked what sort of things inspire me. I usually half-jokingly say 70s metal, cheesy horror movies, and comics.
Only half-jokingly because there is a not-so-small amount of material in my bibliography of published material and blog posts that are exactly all of that.
Presently I am re-watching Star Trek Enterprise with my wife. We only saw bits and pieces of it when it was new, our kids were babies then, and keeping up on TV was not our main priority.
So Enterprise takes place before The Original Series, thus the ship feels a little "low tech" and everything has a frontier feel to it. While I am enjoying it for its own merits I am getting a ton of ideas for my two Star Trek campaigns; BlackStar and Mercy. Season 1 deals with the Temporal Cold War and the Temporal Accords, which comes up later in Star Trek Discovery. This is also putting back into the mood for a combined Star Trek/Doctor Who game which means FASA rules. BUT inspiration aside I don't want to start YET another Trek game. I haven't even gotten the ones I am planning off the ground.
SO...maybe I can add some of these ideas to Mercy, BlackStar is a bit full as is. Maybe I can add a character from the 31st century on my medical starship. But why is he/she there? Maybe I'll leave that to the player.
Getting back to music for a bit, there is a song that has some solid Trek connotations to it.
One of my all-time favorite songs by the band Queen is '39. Written by the guitarist, and Ph.D. in Astrophysics, Brian May. The song deals with 20 astronauts that leave Earth on a one-year-long mission. One of the astronauts says goodbye to his wife and daughter, but due to the time dilation effects of moving near the speed of light, it is many, many years later when they return. While he is "older but a year" his daughter is a grandmother now. In the song, they had discovered a new world.
I have often thought it would be possible that later warp drive ships would run into older, slower relativistic ships with a crew that had left Earth decades if not a century before. You see this played out really well in Arthur C. Clarke's The Songs of Distant Earth. It was one of my favorite books of his and I loved the idea of "gritty" space travel and one very removed from the notion of warp drives.
Now we have seen visitors from the past in Trek before, TNG's first season episode "The Neutral Zone" has frozen humans from the late 20th century, the second season "The Emissary" with frozen Klingons, and the awkwardly named "The 37's" from Star Trek Voyager's second season with humans from 1937 found on a planet in the Delta Quadrant some 70k light-years from Earth.
This would be an adventure for Mercy. The starship Mercy gets a distress beacon from a ship that left Earth in 2139, just prior to the wide adoption of warp drive. Yeah, there are cargo ships that can go warp 1.8 or so, but most ships are going to be sleeper ships. Mercy, being Mercy, goes in to investigate and discovers a crew from 156 years ago. Likely the ship, I might call the Arthur C. Clark, was headed to a planet that is now claimed by the Klingons, or Romulans, or some other species.
I'll need to ponder this one a little more. In any case, I guess I'll keep looking for inspiration.
Going to go with an alternate word again.
Day 6 Explore
Back on Day 2, I talked about maps. So I figured today would be a good one to go with Explore.
Exploration is a key factor in a lot of games. In D&D and other FRPGs exploration is a key element in Hex Crawls. Even in games like Traveler and Star Trek exploration is a key element.
In truth, I don't do a lot of exploration these days in D&D. Most, no rather, all, my D&D games have a goal in mind. When I ran Vault of the Drow a while back I did a lot of reading on what others have done with it in the past. There is a ton of material out there on exploring the area around the vault of the Drow. Dragonsfoot alone has more material than I'd ever use in a lifetime.
For my BlackStar game exploration is the name of the game. Well, that and horror. I think that is because in BlackStar I really don't have anything like a "big bad" save for all the horrors of space. I am also not sure what my end game for it is, maybe part of the exploration will be mine as well.
Dungeons
Also, this month is all about Dungeons at the RPG Blog Carnival and hosted this month by Plastic Polyhedra. Certainly, the Underdark of the Vault of the Drow qualifies and it would be fantastic to go exploring there one day.
Been in a bit of a creative rut when it comes to D&D and D&D-like games lately. I get my best ideas when running and I have not been doing that in the morning due to the day job.
In the meantime, I have been thinking about my two Trek games BlackStar and Mercy.
For BlackStar I spent some money and had a 3D model designed for my ship, the USS Protector. I got the STL file from the designer and had my youngest print them out on our resin printer. The results? Well, I have to say I am thrilled to death with them.
Looking now I see the blue resin one is a little hard to see. The green resin one I painted with a light-gray/off-white "Corax White" from Citadel paints.
The painted/green resin/smallest is the largest size we can print with the ship length on the y axis. The blue is the largest we can do with the ship length on the z axis.
I am actually pretty happy with both sizes to be honest.
You can see the blue resin one better here. The front of the saucer section was where it was connected to the build plate. Connor raised it by a couple of mm and it looks much better. I gave that one to my friend Greg for his birthday and his own Trek game.
The blue resin also looks like it is the same scale as this little USS Reliant model I have. I also have an Enterprise A that is very nearly the same scale.
The smaller one matches the scale (nearly) of the Enterprise D model I have too.
If I compare to this sizing, the Protector uses the same space frame as does the Ambassador Class Enterprise-C.
I said originally that the Protector was 700 meters, that looks like a typo to me. I am now saying 600 meters, so still longer that than the Enterprise C. Most of that is in the nacelles.
It's kinda cool to have my own little starships coming out of what is this century's version of the replicator.
Speaking of centuries. I have been discussing my Mystoerth Timeline with some others and it is a little like sticking a square peg into a round hole. But it is still nowhere near as bad as trying to get my Star Trek timeline to line up. I am not talking about trying to figure out how to work things like Discovery and Axanar into the mix, I am talking about trying to figure out how Trek and real-world history can co-exist!
One of the bigger issues comes from the episode The Space Seed, the one that introduced Khan. In the episode Khan was supposed to rise to power during the Eugenics Wars in the 1990s. He then left Earth on a DY-100 sleeper ship around 2018.
uh...Ok. Look. The Space Seed aired in 1967. No one at the time thought people would still be watching Trek in the 1990s, let alone new Star Treks on the air at that time.
How do I fix this? Thankfully I stumbled on a video that neatly solves this problem (and some others) for me.
Moving it all to 2090? Well, that works out great for me to be honest. But I might even fudge it a bit more and say it happened in 2067, 100 years after the episode aired. Though that is only 46 years from now!
We know that Zefram Cochrane made his warp flight on April 4, 2063, but there had to be sleeper ships still in use. It works. It is inelegant in a way, there are other dates I'll have to move, but for *my* Trek universe it is fine.
In any case, it might not even come up in my games, though I am sure Mercy will deal with something from the Eugenics Wars. It's just too fruitful of a playground not to do something with it.
Another Corman recycle are the two suns rising on the planet. Same shot is used in The Warrior and the Sorceress. Wonder if it is the same planet? What happened to it I wonder. I was already running low on water in David Cardine's time. Maybe it died out leaving only the Proto B bacteria the scientists are studying.
So we have a mutant monster in a lab out in space. What can go wrong? Well, I sure you can guess. The movie is not great, but it is also not really terrible. Like a lot of Corman's stuff, there is a core here, a kernel of a really good idea here. This movie very, very effectively combines "Alien" and "The Thing" into one movie and puts the whole thing on a station in space. It is Corman, so yeah the women take off their clothes at the drop of a hat. They also run around in high heels and shower together. The future is weird.
The movie is fairly uneven, going from the tension of the escaped mutant in one scene to everyone turning in for the night in the next.
The monster picks people off one by one, you know like a monster will. Until we are just left with just Tracy and Mike. Though the idea of feeding the monster a cancerous tumor to kill it is a novel one.
It was a fun flick, but I got really tired of Tracy's screaming in the last half of the flick.
Gaming Content
Same as you get from Alien or The Thing. Hunt the monster before it hunts you. I suppose that I will have to do a "monster is loose in a research facility" adventure at some point. But I would need to make it different than either "Ghost Ship" or the "Ghost Station of Inverness V." This would have to be a flesh and blood abomination. NOT just an alien, but a creature of humankind's hubris.
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Tim Knight of Hero Press and Pun Isaac of Halls of the Nephilim along with myself are getting together at the Facebook Group I'd Rather Be Killing Monsters to discuss these movies. Follow along with the hashtag #IdRatherBeWatchingMonsters.
It's still Sci-Fi month here at the Other Side and I wanted to do a monster today with some solid sci-fi and old-school roots. I just couldn't get it to jell the way I wanted.
Essentially I wanted D&D/OSR/Sci-Fi versions of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoomian Martians. I was going to give them a few twists, give them a Clark Ashton Smith twist or two, and a dash of Jack Vance.
Here is what I have so far.
Red Martians
Warlike, intelligent. Most "Human-like" of the Martians. I am even toying with the idea of making them Matriarchal as my homage to the great Dejah Thoris.
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| Red Martian, ePic Character Generator |
White Martians
Psychic and the only truly evil Martian race. Rulers are a caste of priests. Borrowing heavily from Warhammer 40k, UFO myths, and a little bit of DC Comics.
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| White Martian, ePic Character Generator |
Green Martians
These guys are essentially my Tharks, but also are a noble race. They are violent and will kill you, but they can be reasoned with. My goal here is not to make them Space Orcs, Space Dothraki, or Martian Klingons.
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| Green Martian, ePic Character Generator |
There might be others.
All are genetically compatible with each other, more or less. I'd love to work in "War of the Worlds" into this somehow too.
For my OSR/D&D-style games, this might be a world within Spelljamming distance or even some sort of Astral Travel. Adding in bits of Dark Sun might help smooth out some of the rough bits. It would all work great for an Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea game.
For BlackStar I would want the civilization dead and only recently had xeno-archeologists having discovered the ruins of an ancient and vast Martian culture. The horror will come in when they can't figure what it was that killed them all.
Links to Mars Related Posts
Something a little different tonight, an 80s sci-fi horror movie with a solid Sword & Sorcery feel to it. It's from Roger Corman, so I guess that is not a huge surprise.
This movie has everything! My favorite Martian Ray Walston, Erin "Joanie" Moran, Grace Zabriskie, Sid Haig, pre-Freddie (and really young looking!) Robert Englund, a space witch, tentacle rape monsters! Wait. What was that last bit again? Another Roger Corman offering. I have to admit the cast is something else really.
The movie starts with the crew of our spaceship, the Quest, headed to planet Morganthus by the order of some mysterious dude called "The Planet Master." We never see his face due to the glowy red energy around it. He is playing some game with our Space Witch. Our pilot, Captain Trantor (Zabriskie) was the only survivor of some famous disaster that has left her a little worse for the wear. We learn Alluma (Moran) is a psychic sensitive and she detects no life on the planet they all but crash land on.
The Quest crew investigates a crashed ship, the Remus, where all the crew seems to be dead. Soon the first crew member, Cos, is killed by some sort of monster with claws. The crew looks for more survivors and finds a really creepy ass pyramid. The mission Commander, Ivar, is lowered into the pyramid but he gets attacked by some blood-sucking tentacles. Quuhod (Haig) is killed by one of his own crystal throwing stars. Dameia (played by Taaffe O'Connell), in one of the most controversial bits in the movie, is attacked by a giant maggot/worm/tentacle beast who manages to get all her clothes off before it rapes/eats her.
We find out that Core, the cook (Walston) is some sort of spy. He had been in the disaster the Captain had been in. She seems to be hallucinating an attack. We next see her trying to leave the ship but she bursts into flames. The remaining crew regroup and head back to the pyramid. They get separated, of course, and picked off one by one until only Kore and Cabren remain. We learn that Kore is really the Planet Master and this pyramid is part of a game. Cabren manages to kill Kore, but becomes the Planet Master in his place.
I'll give the writers credit, there is some background going on here. I am not sure that it all translates well on the screen though. I like the idea of the pyramid causing fear, but there is no reason why The Master/Kore would actually be interested in it.
The movie has a solid Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) feel to it. No surprise really, James Cameron served as Production Designer and Second Unit Director on the film would five years later direct Aliens.
But, and let's be honest here, the movie is not good. I am not sure why we never saw it then but Erin Moran is terrible in this. Taaffe O'Connell is in it only so she can take off her clothes. Even mainstays like Robert Englund and Sid Haig are wasted here. Ray Walston and Grace Zabriskie were obviously here for the paycheck.
Gaming Content
The idea of entering an ancient and abandoned pyramid is as old as...well, the Pyramids. This one just happens to have a sci-fi horror feel to it. There are a lot of ideas I could steal for BlackStar. Watching this after reviewing Stars Without Number I am more convinced now that my BlackStar game must have psionics.
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Tim Knight of Hero Press and Pun Isaac of Halls of the Nephilim along with myself are getting together at the Facebook Group I'd Rather Be Killing Monsters to discuss these movies. Follow along with the hashtag #IdRatherBeWatchingMonsters.
One thing I wanted to accomplish with the recent Character Creation Challenge was to create characters that I could use in my War of the Witch Queens campaign AND get ideas for a multiverse of witches.
But that is not the only thing I wanted from it.
I also wanted to see the differences between various Star Trek-like systems in order to find good NPC for my BlackStar and Star Trek: Mercy games.
Of course, my main source is going to be the challenge founder Carl Stark at Tardis Captain's blog (and of course his Star Trek RPG page).
Reading through all of these (and it has been great!) I am more convinced now that my Star Trek Mercy game needs to be a FASA Trek game while BlackStar can be something else; most likely Star Trek Adventures.
Star Trek: Mercy
As I have mentioned previously Star Trek Mercy will take place aboard a Federation Hospital Ship. Its mission is a bit like Doctors Without Borders; they fly into dangerous situations with the goal of helping. While it is a Federation/Starfleet ship I am going to open up character choices to any and all Star Trek races. So humans, Vulcans, Andorians will be expected, but also Romulans, Klingons, Deltans, even Gorn, and Orions if someone can give me a good reason. These crew will not be members of Starfleet, they still belong to their respective worlds, but I also have to, want to, work within canon.
For this, a few guidelines are needed. No Klingon Starfleet officers. Worf was the first and the Federation and the Klingon Empire are at a period of cooled tensions. They are not allies per see, but they are also not shooting at each other. We know from the TNG episode "The Neutral Zone" that Romulans have not had any relations with the Federation since the Tomed Incident of 2311. There is still a Romulan Ambassador on Earth in 2293. That gives me 18 years' worth of gameplay.
I stated in my first post on this that 2295 would be a good year to set this in. Seems like I was on to something. I can even use the Plasma Plague of 2294 as the first mission of the Mercy. We even get a Stardate for it, 38235.3, though that date can't really work for 2294, it doesn't even work well for The Original Series Stardates. That date gives you Wed Feb 24 2360 for TNG and Tue Oct 28 2279 for TOS. Might need to use the FASA Trek Stardate calculations to make this one work!
Also since this is FASA Trek I can borrow some ideas from The Next Generation Officer's Manual. In particular, the notion that there were a bunch of different uniforms in use. Gives me an excuse to use the ones I want. These would be new here and old by the time the USS Protector and the Mystic-class ships roll out.
I am going to need a new ship design too.
What would also be nice is to work in some Original Series Apocrphya into my game; Saavik being half-Vulcan/half-Romulan, Chekov working for Starfleet Intelligence and a touring Chess Master (loosing to the Betazoids), Scotty as a Professor of Engineering at Starfleet Academy before getting lost near a Dyson Sphere in 2294, Sulu as the Captain of the Excelsior and Harriman as Captain of the Enterprise B. Uhura as Demora Sulu's Godmother. I would also like to find out more about Lt. Elise McKennah, played by Michele Specht in Star Trek Continues.
McCoy becoming an admiral, Spock continuing his role as Federation Ambassador, and Kirk disappearing on the Enterprise B. Though those are not really disputed.
I like this idea since it is also the first Trek game my Star Trek loving wife has mentioned she would like to play.
One of the things I found was some hand-written notes on various personages from my games. A couple that had a very strange genesis and how I worked around to get them to where I have them now. Vague? Yeah. But let me start at the beginning and work my way back up.
Let's go back to Christmas 1982. I was full-on in my Star Wars fandom. I had seen Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back a couple of times. I had read everything I could my hands on about Star Wars and I was hungry for more. Also at this time, I was really getting into D&D. My introduction three years prior and my gift of the Basic and Expert Sets had kept me going for a long, long time. Anyway Christmas. We would always go to my mom's sister's house for Christmas eve or close to that. Here we would get small gifts. Nothing huge, my mom had a big family, and getting something for everyone was expensive.
This year (and I don't remember many other gifts we got to be honest) I got something that was very strange to me. I got a deck of Slap Jack cards. I thought it was an odd gift really, I was 13 and this was a game for little kids. But this set was different. At least my Aunt or whoever bought it knew of my love of Star Wars and this was a "Space Age Slap Jack."
While I might have played it as RAW once or twice that Christmas, that is not why I grew to enjoy this set. It was the art and the overall concept.
Jack, The Lord of Aggression was an obvious Dollar Store Darth Vader. He may have been the "star" but he was also the least interesting. There were cards named "Interstellar Demon" and "Guardian of the Oathbreakers" and "Orbital Guardians." The art is not fantastic, but it is very compelling.
But it was the Queen of Goodness that captured my attention.
She was a Queen. She had a glowing sword. Not a "lightsaber" a glowing sword. And she looked profoundly sad to me. I wanted to know more about this deck, the story it was trying to tell me. But what was it? It was 1982, there was no Internet, BitNet was still new and no one had access to it. So I did what I always do. I made a story up.
In a way, these cards became an ersatz tarot deck. I would deal out the cards and whatever came up I created a narrative in my mind. Jack was what I'd call today a Warlock. He was the great traitor of the Galactic Peace. The Queen was the young ruler of the Galaxy, now in charge after the untimely death of her father the old King. She ruled, but Jack strove to take it away from her. In this tale, my Galaxy had both high tech and old magic. If this sounds familiar, then yes I have adopted some of these broad strokes for my BlackStar game.
I don't think I ever wrote any of this down. The material I found was recycling some years later.
Fast-forward a couple of years. Now I am in my hardcore AD&D phase. While I had been listening to music my whole life I was actually "listening" to the music instead of just "hearing" it as my late brother Mike would tell me. One of the albums (tapes really) that also captured my imagination was Led Zeppelin's Four, or IV. The song "Battle of Evermore" on side A, right before "Stairway to Heaven" grabbed a hold of my imagination with its epic Tolkienesqe imagery. But what really grabbed me more than anything were the haunting vocals of Sandy Denny. I found the voice of my Queen.
But by this time I had moved my sci-fi fandom and my fantasy fandom further apart. Another little tidbit. While listening to the Battle of Evermore for the first time I misheard the lyrics (as we often did in the 80s). The lyrics go:
Queen of Light took her bow
And then she turned to go,
The Prince of Peace embraced the gloom
And walked the night alone.
But I heard: Queen of Lies and Prince of Beasts. These names took over the meta-story of the Queen of Goodness and the Lord of Aggression, but of course, they had changed a little. The Queen of Lies was the Queen not because of lying, but because of the only lie she ever told, a lie that caused the death of her father (remember she was sad). The Prince of Beasts, the former Lord of Aggression was also changed into a character that was aggressive, but not due to evil, but because he was protecting the wild spaces he lived. He became more of a Beorn-like character. Their stories are linked. And don't get me started on the Angels of Avalon or the Dragon of Darkness. Though my Orange Dragon from the Pumpkin Spice Witch certainly fits that.
The Queen of Lies and the Pince of Beasts eventually became something akin to faerie lords in my games. Both are sad figures and represent the melancholia of certain heroes in various tales.
The Tale of the Queen of Lies and Prince of Beasts
A long time ago a Faerie King had a beautiful daughter. Her mother had been human and died in childbirth. The King, being a wise King, did not blame the girl as other monarchs might have, and instead of bemoaning the lack of a son he raise his beautiful, but sad daughter to be ready to rule in his place one day.
The King's lands were beset by all sorts of beasts so much so that his Kingdom and the surrounding lands became known as the Wild. While the King loved his daughter, his people did not. In their minds, she was the cause of her mother's death and the reason the King would not remarry to have sons. Over time the King's advisors suggested he marry her to the local Lord who had control over all the wild beasts. The King saw the wisdom of this and prepared the marriage. His daughter however did not want to marry the Prince, whom she felt was an uncouth savage, even if he was a Faerie Lord.
On the night before the wedding, there was a great feast. The daughter though, not being able to stand it any longer, broke hospitality and claimed she was already betrothed to another. When it was discovered that the girl had done something no other fey in the kingdom could do. She had lied, but no one knew this or suspected it.
The Prince, insulted waged war on the Kingdom. The war lasted for what felt like forever. Until a fateful day when the Prince was ready to kill the defeated King did his daughter admit her wrongdoing.
The Prince, realizing his war was built on a falsehood, left the Kingdom and was never seen by it's inhabitants again, though he could be seen roaming the wilder places of the lands. The princess, shamed, sat by her father's side. He forgave her and within a few nights had died from his wounds. The girl, being the only one of royal blood, became the Queen. She has been ajust, if unloved Queen, but her subjects still refer to her as The Queen of Lies. Her lands are now known as the Kingdom of Rain.
Queen of Lies
Faerie Lady
Frequency: Unique
Number Appearing: 1 (1)
Alignment: Neutral [Lawful Neutral]
Movement: 120' (40') [12"]
Armor Class: -1 [20]
Hit Dice: 14d8+28** (91 hp)
Attacks: Sword or by spell
Damage: 1d8+4 or by spell
Special: Witch spells (13th level), damaged by magic weapons
Size: Medium
Save: Witch 14
Morale: 10
Treasure Hoard Class: NA
XP: 3,250
The Queen of Lies rules the lands known as the Kingdom of Rain. Named so for rain that always seems to be falling or threatening to fall at any moment. She called the Queen of Lie because it was a lie that put her on the throne when her father died.
The Queen is a beautiful, but sad and lonely Faerie ruler. She is a fair and just ruler and her people thrive, despite the weather, but they openly dislike her. She has gained the enmity of the Prince of Beasts, lord of the neighboring kingdom, an enmity that has earned her the attention of both the Erlking and the King of Goblins. While she has no interest in either suitor she knows she must choose one faithfully or the curse of rain her kingdom is under will not be lifted.
The Queen possesses her father's great Sword of Light, which provides her protection as well as magical fighting prowess. However, she prefers to use her magic when needed. The Queen turned to sorcery and witchcraft to be able to lift her Kingdom's curse. She has not but can cast spells as a 13th level Faerie Witch.
Despite her name, the Queen never lies. She is half-human and can lie, but now she chooses not to.
Prince of Beasts
Faerie Lord
Frequency: Unique
Number Appearing: 1 (1)
Alignment: Neutral [Chaotic Neutral]
Movement: 240' (80') [24"]
Armor Class: 2 [17]
Hit Dice: 11d8+33** (83 hp)
Attacks: Fists or by animal type
Damage: 1d8+4 x2 or by animal type
Special: Beast form, damaged only by magic weapons, summon beasts
Size: Large
Save: Monster 11
Morale: 10
Treasure Hoard Class: NA
XP: 3,500
The Prince of Beasts is an odd fey lord in he does not like the company of other faerie lords and ladies, or faeries of any status. Instead, he prefers to spend his time in the wild running with the animals and communing with them.
The Prince appears as a huge elf lord, standing 8' tall. He is broad and muscular. He is often mistaken for a large human or even a smaller hill giant. He wears simple animal skins though nothing can hide his regal bearing.
Like all faerie lords he has a personal weapon, a sword, he can use. But the Prince prefers to fight with his bare hands or by transforming into any natural animal. He can shape-shift into an animal and back 3/per day in the daylight hours. At night he chooses a shape and sticks with it till the dawn.
He can summon any animal as per the Druid spells, Animal Summoning, they will obey his calls till the death.
The Prince of Beasts is on good terms with the various Animal Lords, but doesn't belong to their numbers. He ignores most of the Faerie Lords when he can. He has a special enmity with theQueen of Lies, though he would rather avoid her at all costs. He is also the enemy of the Erlking. The Goblin King fancies himself as a rival, but the Prince does not take the Goblin King seriously.
NIGHT SHIFT Content
In NIGHT SHIFT the Lords of the Faerie continue into the modern-day. The Queen of Lies is a real estate developer living in Seatle. She has plans for the wild areas surrounding the Pacific Northwest. The Prince of Beasts is a Wildlife conservationist. Their battles are less about sword and claw and more about permits and lawsuits. Both though are still powerful in their respective realms.
Another Hammer choice, since I am in the mood. This movie is a classic. Rarely does Sci-fi and horror blend so well as with Quatermass and The Pit (1967). I remember watching this one as a kid and thought how fantastic it was. It has stayed surprisingly up to date.
Like the Creeping Flesh and the Image of Fendahl, this one features a near-human skeleton that is at least 5 million years old. Found in a subway station under Hobbs End (formerly Hobs End) brings into question not only the origins of humankind, but of our concept of evil.
Quatermass is one of the iconic British characters, one I would say is right up there with Sherlock Holmes and the Doctor. In fact I am wondering now why Steven Moffat hasn't given us a modern version of Prof. Quatermass. We are overdue.
Note: After I typed this all up, I found a 2005 Quatermass serial starring Jason Flemyng and long-associated Doctor Who folk David Tennant and Mark Gatiss.
This movie also was the first that got me onto my research of Hobs which would eventually lead to my decision that hobgoblins are a diabolic breed of goblins. A "hob" is a type of devil. The creature movie is often described as a goblin.
This movie also uses the ages-old trope of women being more psychically sensitive than men.
The ending of this one is still surprisingly effective and scary.
Watched: 15
This film scarred me crazy when I was little, but it also is responsible for me becoming more curious on both psychology, anthropology, and the Victorian era. Christopher Lee plays a psychologist and Peter Cushing an anthropologist.
Emmanuel Hildern (Cushing) has come back from a trip abroad to Papua New Guinea where he has found the skeleton of a giant humanoid. It was buried in a lower stratum than Neanderthal, and thus much older (note, Neanderthals have only been discovered in Europe and the Middle East). He is being financed by his younger half-brother James (Lee), who is a psychiatrist.
The skeleton (which my wife and I agree is actually that of a Klingon) begins to grow new flesh when exposed to water.
There is a bit about his dead wife, she died in his brother's insane asylum, and maybe his daughter inheriting her madness. Oh. And an escaped mental patient Lenny. "Lenny the Lunatic" would a focal point of many nightmares after that. Not so much him but how he was killed.
Cushing plays the absent-minded professor with his head full of science. Lee plays the scientist looking for fame and money.
Eventually, Emmanuel concocts an idea of using the Klingon's blood as a vaccine against evil. Of course, the doctor injects his "unruly" daughter (Lorna Heilbron) with it (she went into her mother's room where she was forbidden!) but not before he sees what it does to his test monkey. In pure Victorian fashion turning evil makes you hotter, his daughter Penelope starts tarting around London. Oh and she turns from a blonde to a red-head in a red dress. Not at all subtle really.
There is some back and forth between Lee and Cushing (as there should be, they were the best as antagonists) with the skeleton getting stolen and caught in the rain.
The movie is remarkably uneven, but still quite a lot of fun really. Lorna Heilbron is absolutely adorable in this, first as the "Good" Penelope and then as the "Evil" Penelope. Christopher Lee is his typical commanding self. Not evil, but certainly amoral.
The ending bugged me then. Was it all in Emmanuel's head or has some ancient evil been released in the world? Now I think it is great.
Watched: 14
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